Map Tools

[Koltes]

Since the protractor was so well received I decided to try my luck further

If I may suggest.

1. All drawings remain on the map until they are manually deleted. This allows to save course, measurements etc even after entering and exiting battle instances or reloading the game. This will help to navigate even after you had to log off. Drawings will become your route log.

When tool is active the drawing is red. When its been set the drawing turn grey like on the image #4 below.

2. Protractor behavior needs to be slightly tuned. When you click on the map you FIRST set the destination point and THEN drag the protractor out (its vise versa now, your first click sets the protractor). This will help to drag it to correct bearing much easier than keep clicking on the map until you get the right angle.



3. Dividers is another easy tool that will give us 75% of all navigation needs



4. Ruler to draw a straight line between waypoints allowing to plot the course.



5. Make notes anywhere on the map to mark locations, distances, angels etc.

6. These tools will allow us to plotting the course like so



7. Longitude and Latitude added to the grid. Right now its just a grid without numbers. We need the actual numbers to be able to communicate.

8. Spyglass bearing - Spyglass will receive a small aim cross. WHEN looking through spyglass in OW the compass is "released" from being ship oriented to spyglass oriented, thus allowing you to sight the bearing in the OW by observing actual objects and land marks.


The above will pretty much sort all our navigation issues.

[Norfolk nChance]

 

YES, close the thread. Done dusted...

Admin... there you go....

 

Norfolk.

 

 

[flipper687]

Its funny how people different sides of the globe can come up with exactly the same ideas. Been toying with exactly the same principles ideas as explained and the easiest way to implement all day while working. Koltes you've saved my poor fingers as they've been keyboard bashing all day. Great work, I reckon what you have suggested would go far in satisfying all but the purest navigators out there. Might I add that providing a linear scale to one side of the map that adjusts accordingly with map resolution and via distance results obtained from 3 points already available from the trader tool. It would be fantastic if the proposed divider set idea was able to be fixed one end at one of the distance result locations in turn and then arcs drawn on the map from the divider free end. Thus 3 arcs will intersect or at least box in an approximate area of location. I appreciate you know this etc. Bat that kinda functionality I'd take the greatest pleasure in using and applying as I am sure others would too. Flipp

[Koltes]

1 minute ago, flipper687 said:

Its funny how people different sides of the globe can come up with exactly the same ideas. Been toying with exactly the same principles ideas as explained and the easiest way to implement all day while working. Koltes you've saved my poor fingers as they've been keyboard bashing all day. Great work, I reckon what you have suggested would go far in satisfying all but the purest navigators out there. Might I add that providing a linear scale to one side of the map that adjusts accordingly with map resolution and via distance results obtained from 3 points already available from the trader tool. It would be fantastic if the proposed divider set idea was able to be fixed one end at one of the distance result locations in turn and then arcs drawn on the map from the divider free end. Thus 3 arcs will intersect or at least box in an approximate area of location. I appreciate you know this etc. Bat that kinda functionality I'd take the greatest pleasure in using and applying as I am sure others would too. Flipp

I'm sure lots of people were thinking among this lines.
Re: dividers, yeah on my original pic I made scale line to use dividers to measure distance, but to make this easier on us and devs, the divider should just tell the distance when clicked and dragged as per picture #3   

[flipper687]

For all those interested I've managed to import and scale Siegfried's map into CAD. Free versions of CAD have all the tools we would wish for. If you want to see a sample of the testing I have been doing this morning, have a look at my profile page. As for the life of me, I cannot seem to get attachments to work for me when replying to threads. Probably me being a DmbAss. But after I have checked with Siegfried I am more than happy to put up the CAD file for everybody to use. Flipp

 

[flipper687]

Dooh, seems it was me being a DmbAss.............rofl. For this test location was Port Morant 3, points of data from the trader tool was Tiburon, Portillo & Pedro Cay. I am sure everybody clicks onto the fact that the map can be used for chart plotting etc etc etc. But I love the idea that the chart will have some in accuracies that reflect the time period and we can all independently update modify our own charts recording anything we so choose. Flipp

 

[Daguse]

Can we also add the ability to identify ports from further away? May be we have to visit the port first, but when you are 5 minutes out and still can't see the name, it can be frustrating. 

Now there may be fun. 
At one point @admin said they want to redo and bring back officers. What about a navigation officer that can be leveled up to gain additional tools like what @koltes suggested?  

[Archaos]

2 hours ago, flipper687 said:

Dooh, seems it was me being a DmbAss.............rofl. For this test location was Port Morant 3, points of data from the trader tool was Tiburon, Portillo & Pedro Cay. I am sure everybody clicks onto the fact that the map can be used for chart plotting etc etc etc. But I love the idea that the chart will have some in accuracies that reflect the time period and we can all independently update modify our own charts recording anything we so choose. Flipp

 

Nice work, but at the end of the day we will now have a system that can fix your vessel position just as accurately as the previous given Lat/Long position, making the whole removal of the position pointless.

And from a more historical point of view there is no way the vessels could tell their distance off ports or points of land that they could not see. Even for a vertical sextant angle to be used to calculate distance off you had to know the height of the object being viewed and be able to see it.

The type of navigation being done here is more like what was done using a Radio Direction Finder, which came into use a long time after the period the game is set in. 

[flipper687]

I appreciate [Archaos] that the method does not in anyway reflect what was available back then to find position. Hence in my earlier post I said but for the purest navigator. The point for me is that you have to put the effort in to use etc. For me that's a plus as well as being able to plot all those things we find on our travels shallows, rocks, wrecks etc.  

[Archaos]

5 minutes ago, flipper687 said:

I appreciate [Archaos] that the method does not in anyway reflect what was available back then to find position. Hence in my earlier post I said but for the purest navigator. The point for me is that you have to put the effort in to use etc. For me that's a plus as well as being able to plot all those things we find on our travels shallows, rocks, wrecks etc.  

I was not being critical of the work you have done but just trying to point out that at the end of the day we will still end up with a system whereby you know your position fairly accurately which negates the removal of GPS style position we had previously.

Personally I am still in favor of being able to get your position once each game day and that in addition to some basic plotting tools would I feel make for a more realistic experience.

[flipper687]

[Archaos] I never thought, assumed you were being critical. Apologies if this is how I seemed. For me rather than banging on to devs about not being able to locate position or for those who perhaps cannot spend the time or effort without the GPS or grid line numbers this is an alternative that might appease. Thus allowing the devs to concentrate on those things they wish. Truly I'd love to see more technical challenges in navigation, I do like the idea you suggest. I was speaking this morning with Norfolk nChance, we were talking about sextant use etc. But as time runs so quickly in OW and in RL the speed of the rotation of the earth can effect accurate usage of a sextant apart from those maybe well practiced in the fine art. I doubt a practical fix could be taken in OW by this method even if the "DATA" positioning of the sun etc was correct. My thought process is that something that takes some small effort is better then nothing. 

[Koltes]

2 hours ago, Archaos said:

Nice work, but at the end of the day we will now have a system that can fix your vessel position just as accurately as the previous given Lat/Long position, making the whole removal of the position pointless.

And from a more historical point of view there is no way the vessels could tell their distance off ports or points of land that they could not see. Even for a vertical sextant angle to be used to calculate distance off you had to know the height of the object being viewed and be able to see it.

The type of navigation being done here is more like what was done using a Radio Direction Finder, which came into use a long time after the period the game is set in. 

What is so bad about it? We are not given GPS location for free. Should game provide proper celestial navigation we would be able to find Longitude and Latitude manually. Since this does not exist triangulation would represent the celestial navigation just fine. But this takes some time to do. It takes practice to do it properly. There is still possibility to a mistake that would generate WTF result  
Are we not wanting to have ANY navigation in 17-18th century. This would be just wrong right?

Removal of GPS, while remaining distance triangulation would keep both camps happy.
Problem with GPS is that you can instantly share your location with anyone. Triangulation is a process that cannot be completed while under attack or while chancing. So this does not revert the ganking issue.
New players will be very confused. Older player will be a veteran sea dogs. Of course they would be able to tell where they are after some calculations.

This is a healthy gameplay

[Archaos]

6 minutes ago, koltes said:

What is so bad about it? We are not given GPS location for free. Should game provide proper celestial navigation we would be able to find Longitude and Latitude manually. Since this does not exist triangulation would represent the celestial navigation just fine. But this takes some time to do. It takes practice to do it properly. There is still possibility to a mistake that would generate WTF result  
Are we not wanting to have ANY navigation in 17-18th century. This would be just wrong right?

Removal of GPS, while remaining distance triangulation would keep both camps happy.
Problem with GPS is that you can instantly share your location with anyone. Triangulation is a process that cannot be completed while under attack or while chancing. So this does not revert the ganking issue.
New players will be very confused. Older player will be a veteran sea dogs. Of course they would be able to tell where they are after some calculations.

This is a healthy gameplay

All well and good, but I am sure that as this is done on a 3rd party site it will not be long before someone develops a very quick method of fixing position by simply inputting 3 distances from the trader tool.

[Koltes]

Just now, Archaos said:

All well and good, but I am sure that as this is done on a 3rd party site it will not be long before someone develops a very quick method of fixing position by simply inputting 3 distances from the trader tool.

Thats what im sayng, its aint that bad. You can almost say that its a navigation

[Arthur Peckington]

This is fantastic! We need this yesterday.

[flipper687]

After receiving the OK from Siegfried, who without his scholarly work and pure genius and skill this would not of been possible in such a short time. My hat's off to him and total respect given. I won't insult anybody's intelligence going into CAD use. There are many tutorials on you-tube for those who have not used it before. But for the basic things, functions guys will be doing. I am pretty sure if you can use paint YAWL (pardon the pun) be running in no time. I used AutoCAD2018 as I am most familiar with AutoCAD. I believe AutoCAD allow free download of version 2018 for both trial and student access. For those experts in CAD I did try to embed fully the image file so that only the .DWG was required. However sometimes on re-open I would just end up with a blank image. Hence by doing by reference I have had no issue. I'm guessing the issue with embedding fully is to do with file size of the image. The ".zip" file is a zipped folder containing all the required files to open in AutoCAD. Just click on the link download unzip keep the content in the folder and open the contained ".DWG" with your CAD program. Anyways fair winds and good landfalls.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0Bz_-JJV6Mm3AU29rR01pYlhVdEE?usp=sharing   

[Macjimm]

On 5/26/2017 at 9:58 PM, koltes said:

8. Spyglass bearing - Spyglass will receive a small aim cross. WHEN looking through spyglass in OW the compass is "released" from being ship oriented to spyglass oriented, thus allowing you to sight the bearing in the OW by observing actual objects and land marks.

It would be great to have map tools in game.  Really great.  I would like it.   Although all of this available outside of the game.  The ability of obtain a bearing without pointing the bow of the ship is the only measurement that can not be made outside of the game.  

Rather than having a magic spyglass that provides an azimuth (or bearing) to the sighted object,  I would much prefer a compass that can be sighted to obtain a direction.

[flipper687]

I totally agree. However for now we makes do with helping the devs in any little way we can. CAD for me allows me to add content myself for free. I'm no cartographer but I will take great pleasure personalising my map. I'll be using a layout per voyage leaving the original map in model. Thus I'll have a personal log as my experience grows. Cant wait to find my first "here be monsters" moment to plot.

[Belamy]

NAVIGATION

Have people lost the plot? This is a game of Naval Action, emphasis on ACTION, this is not an old world sailing simulator, it is a game of action, trading, PVP, PVE and Port Battles. In the era that the game portrays you as the Captain had a crew that had specific duties with one of the most important being Navigation, this was a full time job, the navigator did not issue orders pertaining to gunnery or tactics he was solely there to give the Captain the best position and course to steer to avoid shoals, reefs, shallows and any know obstructions to the ships safety. Every hour sextant fixes along with any possible landmarks, lighthouses or lights from known towns or ports would be taken and transferred to the chart and updating the Captain or Officer of the Watch. This in mind, the ships GPS position and the Lat and Long lines on the map (that had a built in inaccuracy) as before the wipe would in fact be the information passed to the Captain (Player) and by switching to the map view would portray the Captain looking at the Navigators calculations and knowing where the ship is. The current protractor is inaccurate in the fixing of the initial position and only gives a baseline projection that could be done easier with the same accuracy by eyeballing it. The baseline projection from point A to B does not take in account wind shifts, shallows, reefs or Islands and therefore to travel long distances to another port or position in open ocean it would take a number of baselines (done separately) to know points on the map taking longer to travel and leaving the ship vulnerable to attack while you are trying to navigate at the speed in open world that you are travelling. I reiterate that  this is a game that is supposed to be enjoyable to play not painstakingly hard and frustrating, think of the new players, I feel sorry for them as they will be disheartened very quickly and go to a game that is enjoyable and fun to play. Tell me where is the fun in not knowing your position on the open world map? I have done navigation in my 31 years in the Navy and find this just another attempt to lose players. Wake up and smell the roses.

[flipper687]

[Belamy] As a former military man myself. I get what u say. However as I have said this adds content for me on a personal basis. Perhaps it should be a matter of choice, IE those who want position to be provided should be able to enable it. For me if the choice was there I'd prefer not to use it, but that's me. Fence sitter I guess, I have no opinion either way on what should and should not be available to others as its a personal preference to my mind.

 

 

 

 

[Belamy]

3 minutes ago, flipper687 said:

[Belamy] As a former military man myself. I get what u say. However as I have said this adds content for me on a personal basis. Perhaps it should be a matter of choice, IE those who want position to be provided should be able to enable it. For me if the choice was there I'd prefer not to use it, but that's me. Fence sitter I guess, I have no opinion either way on what should and should not be available to others as its a personal preference to my mind.

 

 

 

 

[Flipper687] Well said I agree wholeheartedly. When you log on there should be a button to enable positioning or leave as is. Wish the Dev's had the same thoughts.

[Koltes]

7 hours ago, Macjimm said:

It would be great to have map tools in game.  Really great.  I would like it.   Although all of this available outside of the game.  The ability of obtain a bearing without pointing the bow of the ship is the only measurement that can not be made outside of the game.  

Rather than having a magic spyglass that provides an azimuth (or bearing) to the sighted object,  I would much prefer a compass that can be sighted to obtain a direction.

Thats exactly what I propose Spyglass to do. When you go into spyglass mode and move it around, it shows the bearing where you point the reticle 

 

 

6 hours ago, Belamy said:

NAVIGATION

Have people lost the plot? This is a game of Naval Action, emphasis on ACTION, this is not an old world sailing simulator, it is a game of action, trading, PVP, PVE and Port Battles. In the era that the game portrays you as the Captain had a crew that had specific duties with one of the most important being Navigation, this was a full time job, the navigator did not issue orders pertaining to gunnery or tactics he was solely there to give the Captain the best position and course to steer to avoid shoals, reefs, shallows and any know obstructions to the ships safety. Every hour sextant fixes along with any possible landmarks, lighthouses or lights from known towns or ports would be taken and transferred to the chart and updating the Captain or Officer of the Watch. This in mind, the ships GPS position and the Lat and Long lines on the map (that had a built in inaccuracy) as before the wipe would in fact be the information passed to the Captain (Player) and by switching to the map view would portray the Captain looking at the Navigators calculations and knowing where the ship is. The current protractor is inaccurate in the fixing of the initial position and only gives a baseline projection that could be done easier with the same accuracy by eyeballing it. The baseline projection from point A to B does not take in account wind shifts, shallows, reefs or Islands and therefore to travel long distances to another port or position in open ocean it would take a number of baselines (done separately) to know points on the map taking longer to travel and leaving the ship vulnerable to attack while you are trying to navigate at the speed in open world that you are travelling. I reiterate that  this is a game that is supposed to be enjoyable to play not painstakingly hard and frustrating, think of the new players, I feel sorry for them as they will be disheartened very quickly and go to a game that is enjoyable and fun to play. Tell me where is the fun in not knowing your position on the open world map? I have done navigation in my 31 years in the Navy and find this just another attempt to lose players. Wake up and smell the roses.

Mate. Devs took GPS away and we are NOT getting it back. Are we going to be like a new born blind kittens or should we at least have SOME tools that would help us navigate?
 

[Taurcan]

What is the point of removing the known latitude and longitude from the game? A protractor is totally useless if you don't know your position? We would still be navigating by following shore lines, without the use of sextants and chronometers, which permitted very close navigation. You can't plot a course without it, unless you have view of landmarks.

I entered into a chase with a ship carrying contraband, from near Kingston Jamaica.

After a very long chase , with multiple changes of heading, and times,. ,and taking over an hour to capture it, the only direction

I knew was that Jamaica was hopefully somewhere north. It was, but, by estimate, I sighted land, much closer to Savanna than Kingston, it was far west of Carlisle. With a known close fix, I could have headed directly for Kingston.

They knew how to determine lat and long. Bring it back or give us the means to determine it.

Another baby gone with the bathwater. 

[Norfolk nChance]

20 hours ago, flipper687 said:

After receiving the OK from Siegfried, who without his scholarly work and pure genius and skill this would not of been possible in such a short time. My hat's off to him and total respect given. I won't insult anybody's intelligence going into CAD use. There are many tutorials on you-tube for those who have not used it before. But for the basic things, functions guys will be doing. I am pretty sure if you can use paint YAWL (pardon the pun) be running in no time. I used AutoCAD2018 as I am most familiar with AutoCAD. I believe AutoCAD allow free download of version 2018 for both trial and student access. For those experts in CAD I did try to embed fully the image file so that only the .DWG was required. However sometimes on re-open I would just end up with a blank image. Hence by doing by reference I have had no issue. I'm guessing the issue with embedding fully is to do with file size of the image. The ".zip" file is a zipped folder containing all the required files to open in AutoCAD. Just click on the link download unzip keep the content in the folder and open the contained ".DWG" with your CAD program. Anyways fair winds and good landfalls.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0Bz_-JJV6Mm3AU29rR01pYlhVdEE?usp=sharing   

 

Like the detail and playing around the CAD tool. Would like see if this with base map tools could work on a HTML page or something like

[Rebel Witch]

Looks very promising Koltes. I hope the Devs give us something like this and especially lat/longs so we can give points on a map for mates to go.